The Kind of Fasting That Gets God’s Attention

Posted on February 20, 2012 by Pastor Foley

Part X of our series on Sharing Your Bread

This week we are going to talk about the Work of Mercy of sharing your bread in light of the Work of Piety of self-denial. Or, in other words, fasting.

Fasting??? That doesn’t sound fun. Did you just feel your stomach growling? Are you worried that you might be challenged to give up chocolate for a month or to only drink water for the next three days?

As it so often does, Scripture has something much more transformative in mind, and it’s always turning words we think we know—and, by extension, our lives—on their heads.

We, for example, think of fasting as “not eating.” But in Scripture, it actually means something surprisingly different.

Let’s take a look at Isaiah 58:1-9 and see if we can discern a Biblical definition:

1 “Shout it aloud, do not hold back.
Raise your voice like a trumpet.
Declare to my people their rebellion
and to the descendants of Jacob their sins.
2 For day after day they seek me out;
they seem eager to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that does what is right
and has not forsaken the commands of its God.
They ask me for just decisions
and seem eager for God to come near them.
3 ‘Why have we fasted,’ they say,
‘and you have not seen it?
Why have we humbled ourselves,
and you have not noticed?’

“Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please
and exploit all your workers.
4 Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife,
and in striking each other with wicked fists.
You cannot fast as you do today
and expect your voice to be heard on high.
5 Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,
only a day for people to humble themselves?
Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed
and for lying in sackcloth and ashes?
Is that what you call a fast,
a day acceptable to the LORD?

6 “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
8 Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness[a] will go before you,
and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.
9 Then you will call, and the LORD will answer;
you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.

So based on this passage, how would you say Scripture defines fasting? One thing you definitely could say would be this: Biblically, self-denial does not mean not eating.

Not eating does not impress God. For one thing, you’re still focused on yourself when you’re not eating. You’re focused on yourself not eating! And self-denial means looking beyond your own stomach, whether we’re talking about filling your stomach or keeping it empty.

To say it a little differently: An acceptable fast is something altogether different than mere personal abstinence. It’s about public engagement with those you normally don’t engage with. It means more than just denying yourself the good of bread. It means you bless the ‘fasted’ bread, break it, and share it with the recipients (the poor, the outcast, the one who is outside of the fellowship of the church and not much aware of God)  as token and pledge to withhold no good thing that Christ, the true host, intends to give.

Fasting is not disengagement from the world; it is disengagement from self for the sake of the world and of its Christ.

It is not the transferring of a food commodity, but rather the transferring of one’s affection, compassion, and interest, from self to other for the sake of Christ.

The story we’re looking at in the next few posts is the parable that Jesus tells about this very subject, in Matthew 25:31-46, when he talks about the sheep and the goats. For the sake of length, I’m not going to post the whole thing here, but you might want to take a look at it before this next part.

Now, if I asked you, “Which group fasted, the sheep or the goats?”, what would you say? Before reading the Scripture in Isaiah, we might have said, “Well, neither fasted. Jesus’ story doesn’t talk about fasting at all.” But after reading Isaiah, we could say that the goats may have gone without food in an attempt to get God’s attention…but they received God’s wrath.

What got God’s attention? What Isaiah calls real fasting: the sheep sharing their bread with the poor.

In our next post, we’ll take a look at what it really means to feed the hungry.

How might changing the way we fast impact our lives and the world?

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Our Meals Should Look Like Jesus’ Meals

Posted on February 17, 2012 by Pastor Foley

Part IX of our series on Sharing Your Bread

As we continue changing the way we think about how and why we share our bread, I want to include this quote from Peter Leithart with New St. Andrews College:

“The difference between the Lord’s Supper and its perversion does not consist in any difference in the ritual actions, the elements used, or the words spoken but rather lies in the way people behave toward one another. The Lord’s death is proclaimed only when the church celebrates rightly, that is, when Christian peace, love, and unity are manifested in the meal, and when their conduct at the meal fits the way the community lives together.”

Our meals should look like his meals, and a big part of that is that our guest list should look like his guest list.

Who, then, should we expect to be around the table with us? Our friends? According to Scripture and history, we should not be surprised when our friends—and everyone else we’d be delighted in our flesh to share a table with—say no.

When we become his servants, sharing his feast invitation to the world, we should expect that carrying out his command will mean establishing new relationships we never would have ever considered having, all because we are being faithful to pass on his invitation and to feast with those whom the rest of the world would rather ignore.

In Luke 1:52-53, Mary, Jesus’ mother, says of God:

52 He has brought down rulers from their thrones 
but has lifted up the humble. 
53 He has filled the hungry with good things 
but has sent the rich away empty.

That will be the story of every faithful church congregation. Our homes and worship times and dinner tables should be populated by the humble and hungry whom God is filling with good things, while those who formerly ruled our lives—those who are rich in reputation, wealth, good looks, or the cares of this world—are sent away empty.

There’s a verse of Scripture that speaks about that: “For to him who has will more be given; and from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away” (Mark 4:25). Says Leithart:

“The person ‘who has’ is someone who receives God’s abundance…and draws upon it to deal generously with neighbors. This person will receive ‘more’ for his or her ministry of sharing. The one ‘who has not’ is blind to God’s riches and must therefore hide talents/pounds, construct barns to hoard harvests, and, in short, lay up treasures on earth. These treasures ‘will be taken away.’”

So when we feast on our own resources with our own friends in our own homes to celebrate our own celebrations, Scripture says, even those feasts will be taken away from us. But when we feast on his resources with the outcasts he calls friends, taking his roving banquet table to them to celebrate his victory over sin and death, then our feasts—and our friendships around his table—will be multiplied, just as his were.

But be prepared to be faithful in a little; sometimes this multiplication takes time.

Some years ago a girl named Maggie grew up on a small Indian reservation in which nearly everyone older than twelve drank alcohol.

Maggie used to baby-sit for Lois, who lived in a neighboring band within the tribe. Once a week she’d go the few miles to her community and take care of Lois’s children. But after a couple of months, Maggie started to wonder, ‘What could Lois possibly be doing every Tuesday night? There’s not much to do around here in these villages.’

So one evening after Lois left to go to the meeting lodge, Maggie packed up the children and went over to the lodge to find out what she was doing. They looked through a window into the lodge and saw a big circle of chairs, all neatly in place, with Lois sitting in a chair all by herself.

The chairs in the circle were empty.

All of this made Maggie even more curious.  So when Lois came home that evening, Maggie asked her, ‘Lois, what are you doing every Tuesday night?’ And Lois answered back, ‘I thought I told you weeks ago, I’ve been holding Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.’

So Maggie asked her back, ‘What do you mean you’re holding meetings? I went over there tonight with the children and looked through the window. We watched you sitting there in that circle of chairs, all alone.’

‘I wasn’t alone,’ Lois said. ‘I was there with the spirits and the ancestors; and one day, our people will come.’

‘Every week Lois set up those chairs neatly in a circle, and for two hours, she just sat there,’ Maggie recalled. ‘No one came to those meetings for a long time, and even after three years, there were only a few people in the room. But ten years later, the room was filled with people. The community began turning around. People began ridding themselves of alcohol.’

Despite your sincerest and most frequent invitations, you may be plowing hard ground.  You may be offering to feast together literally for years before anyone says yes. Those lean times will test you. You will have to ask, “For whom am I doing this? And why?”

In those times, let the Lord’s Supper sustain you. As Peter Leithart says,

“The effect [of the Lord’s Supper] is more a matter of ‘training’ than ‘teaching.’ At the Supper, we eat bread and drink wine together with thanksgiving not merely to show the way things really ought to be but to practice the way things really ought to be.”

Leithart says,

“Frequent eating and drinking at the Lord’s table will inoculate the church against the Gnosticism of modern Christianity (not to mention trendy spiritualisms) that would reduce religion to a private, inner, purely ‘spiritual’ experience… a church that celebrates the communal meal is bound into one Body and will resist the corrosive individualism of modern culture… a church that shares bread at the Lord’s table is learning the virtues of generosity and humility; a church that proclaims the Lord’s sacrificial death in the Supper is exercising itself in self-sacrifice and becoming immune to the lure of self-fulfillment.”

And remember: As Leithart says,

“The operative command in connection with the Supper is not ‘Reflect on this’ but ‘Do this.’”

Let’s do this word.  

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Changing the Way We Think About Why We Share Our Bread

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Pastor Foley

Part VIII of our series on Sharing Your Bread

We noted in our last post why feasting is so important to Jesus.  In short, the feast represents all that humans need: reconciliation, provision, belonging, and fellowship with God and humanity.

But there’s more.

Jesus pays so much attention to food and drink that John Koenig says, “The kingdom of God is like a movable feast, a roving banquet hall that seeks the people of Israel as guests and hosts.” (Koenig, p. 44).

It’s a movable feast. But, as the parable from Matthew 22:1-14 indicates, even though the feast traveled to the guests, most of the guests who everyone suspected would come, chose not to.

According to the parable, why did the invited guests not come? Think deeply about this and look closely at what the parable gives as the reasons.

    • For those who declined not to come, with whom did they want to have fellowship?
    • How did the king respond?
    • How does this correspond to what Jesus experienced with his own banquets?

As you think about that, read this great quote from John Koenig:

“Over 150 years ago Alexis de Tocqueville observed a tendency in the United States toward an individualism ‘which disposes each citizen to isolate himself from the mass of his fellows and to withdraw into the circle of family and friends’” (John Koenig, New Testament Hospitality, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985, p. ix).

It turns out that this phenomenon of wanting to isolate ourselves and hang out only with the people we like isn’t just an American phenomenon. It’s a human phenomenon!

In our fallen nature we turn inward and focus only on caring for ourselves and those like us. Fellowshipping with Jesus—and with others in Jesus’ name—means turning outward toward those who are not like us. And that is an invitation that most people throughout history choose to reject.

Think about Jesus’ own disciples, with whom he ate every day. What kind of people were in that group? Fishermen, tax collectors, women, a zealot, a traitor. Luke, the author of the book of Acts, calls them “uneducated, common men” (Acts 4:13).

And it’s true: The one group that does tend to accept Jesus’ invitation are the outcasts—the poor, the sinners who have no illusions about self-respect, those who have lost everything, those who have tasted the world’s promises and found them to be only empty and destructive.

Koenig puts it like this: “Jesus’ community offered a welcoming place where they could feel honored as children of God apart from the niches they had fallen into at birth or carved out for themselves over the years” (Koenig, p. 29).

So let’s summarize what we’ve learned so far:

    • The primary way Jesus shared the invitation to discipleship wasn’t by inviting them to church but by inviting them to a feast.
    • He didn’t just use the meal to talk about going to church with him. Feasting with him was the way a person followed him, because when one feasts one practices all the behaviors that will be necessary for citizenship in the new heavens and the new earth.
    • Most people who are invited to a feast will reject the invitation.
    • Thus, the invitation must be extended to those who no one would have ever thought to invite in the first place.

So who are we in the parable of the wedding feast? We are the servants. Let’s go back and re-read the parable and see what the servants are asked to do and what they experience. And then let’s ask ourselves:

    • As we’re sharing with people about Christ, are we inviting people to a church service or to a feast?
    • When those we invite from our spheres of influence choose not to come, what are we commanded to do?
    • Who is the guest without wedding clothes?

Jesus’ focus on feasting should change the way we think about why we share our bread.

The problem with homelessness, for example, is not hunger but exclusion from God’s feast—a feast that most of the world rejects. Peter Leithart says,

“At the Lord’s table, we eat bread and drink wine together. And this is way things ought to be: the ideal world is not a world of atomized individuals but an irreducibly social reality. Biological need can be satisfied in isolation; we can eat in the car, at a desk, in front of a computer screen, but a feast is a social event” ( p. 172)

So as Christians we never share our bread simply to alleviate physical hunger. We share our bread to extend the invitation to the kingdom of God where “all these things”—food, shelter, family, eternal fellowship with God and his children, and the forgiveness of Christ—are added in.

The food is the pretext and provision for fellowship with God and his people.

How should this affect meal time for Christians?  What will you do different as a result?

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